


lest we forget

by LiveLaughLovex



Category: The Code (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Military Backstory, Pre-Relationship, Remembrance, Veterans' Day 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27624785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: The Abrahams have produced three generations of men belonging to the United States' Marine Corps. Nobody talks much about what happened to the first two.
Relationships: John "Abe" Abraham & Harper Li, John "Abe" Abraham/Harper Li
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	lest we forget

**Author's Note:**

> I am a full week late for Veterans' Day, and even later for Remembrance Sunday, but I was inspired to write this several days ago and decided to just go along with it. It is mentioned, at one point, that Abe is a third-generation Marine. This is just my own personal family history for him (one of many, because I get so in my head about all the stuff left unspoken about this character that it's not even funny) based on that quote. I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Also, please note; I was already 800 words into this when I realized I gave Abe's great-grandparents the same names as a couple from Once Upon a Time, and I was too lazy to change it. In my defense, both David and Mary Margaret were extraordinarily popular in Ireland in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Regardless of this, I am sorry if it bothers you.

It was in October 1919, on his twenty-first birthday, that David Abraham arrived at Ellis Island. Within a year, he’d married Mary Margaret Murphy, an Irish immigrant herself; within three, the couple had two children toddling about. They had a good life. David found a decent-paying job, the sort that allowed the couple to afford a house of their own in Marine Park, and it was there that they raised six children – four girls and two boys, all of them hard-working, God-fearing people.

David Abraham’s life was good. For those first two decades in his new land, he was happy and at peace. He began believing, naively, that he’d managed to leave behind everything that had chased him from his homeland.

He was proven wrong in December 1941, when his new country was abruptly pulled into the war his old one had been fighting for the past two years. He was proven wrong once again, one month later, on that morning that the elder of his two sons walked into the kitchen to tell him he’d enlisted, and David felt as if his stomach had fallen, immediately, to his feet.

Because David was familiar with war – intimately so. He knew it by the look on Mary Kelly’s face on that day in October 1915 when she’d learned the husband she’d married a year prior and had by her side for less than six weeks would never return to the small home he’d bought her but hardly seen himself – the same home she’d been keeping so completely, painstakingly clean in anticipation of her groom’s arrival. He knew it by the sound of his mother’s sobs, twice over, first on the day they’d buried Patrick and once more on the day they’d buried Sean. And, on a summer day in 1943, he came to know it by the flag atop his eldest son’s coffin, the murmured prayers of mourners, and the look of total devastation in the eyes of his wife.

David Abraham knew war. Intimately. And he hated it more than he’d ever hated anything or anyone else.

He didn’t lose his second son to Europe, but he did lose him to Korea. He’d never forget the way John’s widow looked, standing there in that church, clutching little Russell so tightly to her that David was half-afraid she’d bruise the boy. He’d known Elizabeth McCarthy practically her entire life, since she was just a little girl, running around his backyard with his own daughters. David had walked her down the aisle to his son on their wedding day, taking the place of a father lost twice – first, emotionally, to war, and then, physically, to drink – and had been named godfather of their elder child, the little girl clutching tightly to the skirts of her mother as they put her father in the ground. In all the time he’d known Eliza, he’d never once seen her cry. But there, in that cathedral, dressed all in black with her blonde hair covered by black lace as those around her thanked her for her sacrifice – as if she ever had any choice in the matter, as if any woman, no matter how stoic, would _choose_ to become a widowed mother of two at the tender age of twenty-six – he watched, horrified and devastated, as tears trailed, silently and unchecked, down her pale cheeks. In that moment, something happened to him that he hadn’t even imagined possible. In that moment, David Abraham came to hate the fighting even more.

Russell, John’s boy, grew into a _good_ boy. His sister was good, too; Katherine was a lawyer by twenty-five, a wife and mother by twenty-seven. But they didn’t have to worry about Katherine. She settled in Washington, near her husband’s family. She was the breadwinner of the family, a rarity during the time, and David was prouder of his granddaughter than any words could describe. She did well for herself. She never enlisted in a war they were having to draft people to fight; she never came home half-broken by a war half the country didn’t believe in. Her brother did. Russell was whole physically, but Vietnam took from him something that could never be reclaimed. David wondered how selfish he was, being grateful that, unlike Europe and Korea before, Vietnam didn’t take the entire man during the chaos. War claimed Russell’s soul, not his body. That, at least, was better than what had happened to his father before him.

David lived long enough to see Russell marry – her name was Josephine Burke, a good, Irish-Catholic girl raised by parents who’d grown up in the same New York neighborhood where David and Mary Margaret had raised their own six children. Josie brought the light back into Russell without even trying. She made his grandson absolutely smitten from the moment Russell met her; on that very first day, he’d turned to David, completely serious, and said, _Grandpa, I think I want to marry that girl_ , and David hadn’t doubted for even a second that Russell would do just that, and that it’d be the best thing that’d happened to that boy in all twenty-seven of his years. He was around long enough to meet each of Russell’s children, too – all five of them, the four girls and the one boy, and though he truly did love all of his great-grandchildren equally, he did admit to just about starting to sob on that day in 1985, just before David’s eighty-seventh birthday, that his beaming grandson placed a perfectly healthy boy in his arms, proudly proclaiming that _Grandpa, we’d like to introduce you to John McCarthy Abraham_ , and though David didn’t pray even half as often as he should and never had, he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that in that moment, the sky was filled with Abrahams smiling down at the boy in his arms – half a dozen angels already ready to protect Russell’s John from all the dangers the world had to offer. He also knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that his own John was one of them.

David Abraham died in August 2001, at the ripe old age of 102. The very last thought he had, just before he went into the light and saw his brothers’ smiling faces right alongside his sons’, was _please do not let the fighting take anyone else._

___

_November 11, 2019_  
_Arlington National Cemetery_  
_Arlington, Virginia_

“Hey,” Harper greeted softly, approaching him with a kind, gentle smile. She came to a stop beside him, gaze dropping to the headstone that had had his absolute focus for the better part of the past half-hour before it returned, almost immediately, to his face. Or the _side_ of his face, really, seeing as he wouldn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to intrude, I just wanted to make sure you were alright. You have been out here a while, after all, and it’s… well, it’s pretty _cold_ , Abe.”

“I know,” he replied, absently, which wasn’t something she often associated with him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him quickly, because there really was no need for him to. They had a light caseload at the moment, so there wasn’t any real reason they needed to rush back to the office, and it wasn’t exactly as if it was a _hardship_ , sitting in a heated car and playing on her phone while she waited for him to return. She had really sought him out only because she was concerned. “You alright?”

He glanced over at her, as if considering how to respond. After a moment, he nodded to the gravestone. “My grandfather.”

“Oh.” Harper, too, returned her gaze to the stone, allowing herself to actually read the words this time around, instead of quickly glancing away out of fear she might be intruding on a private moment.

_John Murphy Abraham_

_June 8, 1923 – July 5, 1950_

_Greater love hath no man than this,_

_that a man lay down his life for his friends._

“I’m guessing you’re named after him?”

Abe nodded once. “My dad wasn’t even three when it happened. He felt bad, I think, for not being able to remember anything about his own father’s life. I guess he figured if he couldn’t remember his life, he would give him a legacy. Me.”

Harper smiled sadly. “Well, John Abraham, I’ve got to say, I think you’d be a pretty good legacy to have.”

His lips quirked at that, if only briefly. She considered it a win. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me for being honest.” She glanced around the cemetery. There were still a few people lingering, but at nearly seven o’clock at night, most everyone who’d planned to visit had done so already. “We could’ve stopped in earlier, you know. I know there’s the annual ceremony; I bet Turnbull wouldn’t mind if…”

Abe was already shaking his head. “I’ve never gone to that ceremony. Not since I was a little kid, at least. I respect the people who’ve come before me, I do, but…” He shrugged. “All those politicians that always show up for their photo opportunity, they make it feel… cheaper, somehow. To me, at least.”

“I can see that.” Harper exhaled quietly, returning her gaze to his grandfather’s grave. “Do you know…?”

“How it happened?” Abe finished, glancing over at her. “It was during the Battle of Osan. He took one to the jugular. The medics didn’t even bother to… by the time they got to him, they knew there wasn’t any chance of getting him back. They were in a warzone. They had to save who they could.”

“And they couldn’t save your grandfather,” Harper concluded, heart breaking for both the man standing beside her and the one he was named for, who’d hardly been more than a boy when he’d bled out in an unfamiliar land, leaving behind him a family who would still be grieving that loss thirty-five years later.

“And they couldn’t save my grandfather,” Abe confirmed, burying his hands in his pockets. “My great-grandparents lost both their boys within seven years. One of their sons-in-law died, too, at Normandy. My great-grandfather, he lost both brothers in the First World War. Losing both sons in the Second, it nearly destroyed him. I mean, he hated war more than any pacifist I’ve ever met.” He chuckled wryly. “ _Krieg ist nur eine feige Flucht vor den Problemen des Friedens._ “

Harper stared at him blankly. “I might speak a lot of languages, Abe, but whatever that was is _not_ one of them.”

He grinned at that, just slightly, before offering an explanation. “It means _war is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace._ A German writer said it, once. Thomas Mann, I think. My great-grandfather turned it into his personal philosophy practically as soon as he heard it, though. He’d say it to us, all the time. Always in perfect German, too.” He sighed quietly. “I guess when war costs you as much as it cost him, peace of any kind starts sounding like a good idea.”

“I can understand that,” Harper spoke up, eyes finding his and holding them for several seconds.

Abe cleared his throat, glancing away from her. “So can I.” He hesitated. “He lived to be 102. My great-grandfather, I mean. He died in August 2001, exactly a month before my father. I’ve always wondered if he knew, somehow, what was coming, and his body just… gave out because he couldn’t deal with losing someone else.”

“Or maybe _Somebody Else_ decided to save him that little bit of additional pain and suffering.” They both glanced skyward at the same moment.

“Yeah,” Abe nodded agreeably, gaze returning to the ground, “maybe They did.”

“I’m sorry,” Harper murmured after a moment, reaching over to gently squeeze his arm. She smiled up at him when he looked her way, sympathetic without being pitying, and she could tell, by the look in his eyes, how grateful he was to her for that. “That the world lost him before you got to know him.”

He shook his head. “I’ve heard every story of my grandfather my great-grandparents had to offer. I know him. I have to admit, though, I’m disappointed he never got to know me. See if I lived up to his name.”

Harper reached out to brush away a stray leaf that’d fallen atop his grandfather’s headstone, then read, once again, the Bible verse engraved beneath the man’s name and dates of birth and death.

_Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends._

“He knew you,” she said, resolutely. “He was fighting for you.”

The look Abe threw her way told her he was rather certain she’d lost her mind, but still far too much of a gentleman to call her out on it. “Harper…”

“He was raised by a man who hated war, Abe,” Harper reminded the man pointedly. “He wasn’t fighting for himself out there. He was fighting for the _future_. For his kids and everyone else who came after him. He was fighting for _you_ , for the _idea_ of you, and he was willing to _die_ for it. _That’s_ how much he believed in it. That’s how much he _loved_ it. That’s how much he loved _you_ , even if he never got to _know_ you. He’d be proud of you, John, I’m sure of it,” she concluded, noting the way his gaze softened, making him look a great deal more vulnerable and open, as she murmured his first name.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he uttered, his own words not much louder than her own had been. His tone was sincere, honest in a way few people truly were, under the surface, and she couldn’t fight against the grin pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“For what?” she questioned nonchalantly, looking briefly away from him before she met his gaze again, knowing her eyes were sparkling with amusement and mischief and something else he was not likely to identify, seeing as she hadn’t quite gotten around to identifying it herself. “Telling you the truth?”

He laughed at that, a full-bodied sound that only caused her smile to widen, and she winked up at him, so quickly that she wasn’t even sure he’d caught it, before redirecting her gaze to the gravestone of the first John Abraham. “Maybe… maybe I could come with you next time?” she asked, hesitantly. “To visit him?”

Abe began nodding almost before she’d finished asking the question. “Yeah,” he agreed without even a hint of hesitation. “I think he’d like that.” He paused for a moment, seemingly to consider his words, and then added, almost shyly, “I know I would.”

She smiled herself, just as shy, and nodded once. “Alright, then. Next year. I’ll put it on my calendar the second I get home.” Abe grinned like he thought she was joking. She’d let him go on believing that if he wanted. He didn’t actually need to know how completely honest she was being.

“Hey,” Abe began, after several seconds passed in comfortable silence, “let’s get out of here.” He lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug when she looked over at him. “You’re right. It’s cold out here, and it’s starting to get dark. We’ve paid our respects. I’m pretty sure Great-Granddad wouldn’t want us freezing to death, if all that stuff you said about him _fighting for the future_ was true.” He grinned in response to the rolling of her eyes, having long since grown used to the sort of exasperated affection she typically felt around him. “So, c’mon. We can stop in at The Burger Joint on our way, grab dinner before we get back to the office. My treat.”

“Oh, well, if it’s your treat…” Harper grinned, brushing her fingers against the top of the gravestone one last time, murmuring a final, quiet _thank you_ to the first John Abraham, the one who had given his life in the hopes that it’d make hers better, and then turned to his grandson, falling into step beside him. “We will be getting fries too, won’t we?” she questioned concernedly.

He looked at her as if she were being completely absurd. “Of course, we will. What kind of monster do you take me for, Li?”

“I was just checking, _Abraham_ ,” she shot back, looping her arm through his as they walked. He faltered for a moment, as if surprised by the gesture, but then relaxed nearly as quickly as he’d frozen, keeping up his pace as they made their way out to the parking lot. “And milkshakes, mayhaps?” she bargained, delighting in the way his head tilted back in laughter.

“Yeah,” Abe agreed once he’d regained his composure, his tone holding the same fond exasperation she often showed when speaking to him. “Milkshakes, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I've got a thing for people who typically go by their last names, or a version of their last names, being called their first names by their love interests. It started with Booth and Brennan, years ago, and now I'm completely set in my ways, so 'John' always finds its way into my more serious fics, in some way. I'd apologize for it, but I'm not actually sorry.


End file.
